Novel Full Chapter 324: See and remember (3)
Chapter 324: See and remember (3)
He stayed there—still crouched beside the beast, knees half-sunk in the shimmering pool—as the waterfall’s resonance folded inward.
And Damien drank.
Not greedily, but wholly.
Like a newborn who had never known the meaning of warmth, now latched onto the one thing that made sense in a universe of cold.
The energy seeped into him—not in a surge, but in waves. Rhythmic. Intentional. His lungs pulled it in. His skin absorbed it. His bones, long brittle with absence, felt soaked now—coated in something ancient and right. Not just strength. Not just mana.
Nourishment.
The emptiness he had felt—the hunger beneath the hunger, the thirst that water could never quench—it faded.
His muscles no longer screamed. The spasms stopped. His breathing steadied until it no longer sounded like someone choking for life, but someone settling into it.
This was nothing like the chaos of before. Not the desperate grasp for power, not the instinctive sprint away from death. This was… completion. He could feel each limb returning to him, not just in weight, but in ownership. His fingers no longer felt like something attached to a frayed string—they were his. Rewoven. Reintegrated.
And the pulse of the energy—what he had first felt as a whisper beneath the waterfall—now lived in his chest. Like a second heartbeat. A deeper one. Older. Not his own, but borrowed. Gifted.
He turned slightly to the creature beside him.
It hadn’t moved.
Still crouched. Still breathing. Still drinking.
And Damien saw it—truly, now. That this thing wasn’t monstrous. It wasn’t wild.
It was wounded.
Burned from within like he had been. A body at war with itself. And now—restoring.
And somehow, seeing it like that made everything make sense.
’I’m like it.’
Not in flesh.
But in scar.
He closed his eyes.
And let it continue.
The mana wasn’t hot now. It was whole. It didn’t sting. It soothed. Like water soaking into dry roots. Like a heartbeat finally syncing after a life lived out of rhythm.
He let it in.
Let it pour through his shoulders.
Through his arms.
Through the cracks in his soul he hadn’t dared touch since waking in this world.
And still—it kept coming.
Until he felt it: that faint, undeniable fullness.
His chest no longer felt hollow. His limbs no longer reached out instinctively for more. He was fed.
He opened his eyes again. Clear.
Steady.
And that savage creature—his silent reflection—lifted its head.
Their eyes met.
The creature’s head tilted—barely a motion, just enough to catch the shimmer of the poollight along the curve of its bone-plated jaw.
And then… it smirked.
Not with lips. Not with malice. But with the unmistakable twitch of something that had seen this happen before. A recognition. A cruel familiarity.
Damien blinked.
And in that blink—everything shifted.
A jolt fired through his spine.
His breath hitched.
Then came the pain.
It started deep—inside the core of his chest—where the energy had nested. Where it had settled. But now, it didn’t feel like settling. It felt like combustion.
The mana he’d drawn—the energy he’d welcomed in—flared.
Too much.
Too fast.
A firestorm locked inside brittle bone.
“Gh—!” Damien dropped to his hands, the pool splashing around him. His body spasmed once—then again—then wouldn’t stop. His muscles clenched tight, fighting against themselves, like the mana now owned them and had no intention of sharing.
His fingers clawed at the water, but there was no grip, no grounding. Just burning light surging through every fiber of him, pushing against the shell of his body like it wanted out.
Too much.
It was too much.
He curled forward, teeth gritted, eyes wide. Sweat poured down his brow, but it wasn’t sweat alone. Steam hissed from his shoulders, and beneath his skin—light pulsed.
“Ghh—fuck…!”
He couldn’t hold it. Couldn’t contain it.
Not like this.
Not yet.
Across from him, the creature remained still—but its eyes had narrowed.
And now Damien understood.
That smirk?
It wasn’t joy.
It was warning.
It had known.
And it had let him go on anyway.
Now, the beast moved—slowly. Its limbs flexed as it shifted to a new stance, arms pressing down along the length of its own form, hands flattening along its abdomen, chest, and spine. Deliberate. Precise. Each motion synchronized with a pulse of internal light—not violent, but measured.
As if taming the energy. Directing it inward.
Damien saw it—and even in his agony, some part of him understood.
It was stabilizing.
This wasn’t just channeling. This was containment. Integration. Discipline.
The beast wasn’t fighting the power. It was weaving it.
And Damien—he’d done the opposite.
He’d drunk it.
But he hadn’t guided it.
His body had been hollow, yes—but a hollow glass can still shatter when overfilled.
His hands slammed into the pool again as another wave of power erupted through his chest.
A cry tore from his throat.
And in that moment—he locked eyes with the creature.
The beast was still watching him.
Not mockingly.
Not pitying.
With expectation.
Damien’s lungs seized.
Then a thought cut through the pain, clean and sharp:
’They couldn’t see me before.’
When he’d first stumbled into this place, when the eldritch creatures hadn’t reacted to him—when he’d sat among them unnoticed—it wasn’t that they’d ignored him.
They simply hadn’t registered him.
He’d had no mana.
No weight in this world.
He was an echo.
But now?
Now he was full.
Now he hurt.
And now they could see him.
A howl tore through his chest as he fell sideways, body still convulsing. But this time, he kept his eyes on the creature’s hands. Its motions.
Its rhythm.
Because if he didn’t figure it out—if he didn’t learn—he wasn’t just going to collapse.
He was going to burst.
Damien forced his elbows beneath him.
His arms shook. His jaw clenched. Every nerve in his body screamed to collapse, to roll over and let the burning storm inside him run its course and consume him—but he didn’t. He kept his eyes fixed forward. Locked on the creature.
It was moving again.
Subtle. Measured. Intentional.
Each gesture—palm against chest, arm folded to hip, spine curved in a controlled arc—seemed not just physical, but internal. Damien watched closely, wincing as another surge roared through his legs and up his spine like wildfire in a tight tunnel.
But then… he noticed something else.
The beast’s motions weren’t random.
They repeated.
A sequence.
No—a flow.
It wasn’t just posing. It was guiding.
Guiding him.
Damien’s breath caught.
’Is it… showing me how to do it?’
The next pulse in his body nearly doubled him over—but he forced himself to mimic what he’d just seen. Arms folding to his ribs. Fingers pressed near the navel. Chin lowered slightly.
The effect wasn’t instant.
But it was real.
The mana within him—wild, untethered, thrashing like lightning in a bottle—wavered.
Just slightly.
Then again, with the next breath.
He exhaled hard—”Haaaah”—and inhaled deeper, slower.
Circulation.
The pattern he’d stumbled into before, back when survival demanded it and instinct had done the rest.
Now, he combined them.
The positioning of the beast.
The internal rhythm he remembered.
He inhaled, mentally tracing the path he’d once unlocked—shoulder, chest, gut, leg. As he exhaled, he directed the surge downward, pulling the energy away from his skull, which throbbed like it would crack from pressure.
The response was immediate.
The heat moved.